


Heart of Glass

by middlemarch



Category: GLOW (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Heart Attacks, Hurt/Comfort, Late Night Conversations, Medical, Nurses, Reading, Romance, soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27451828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: “Love shouldn't make a beggar of one. I wouldn't want love if I had to beg for it, to barter or qualify it. And I should despise it if anyone ever begged for my love. Love is something that must be given -- it can't be bought with words or pity, or even reason.”― Jacqueline Susann, Valley of the Dolls
Relationships: Justine Biagi & Sam Sylvia, Sam Sylvia/Ruth Wilder
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	Heart of Glass

The room was dim, the light a layered wash of blue and grey, and it was hard for Sam to make out much beyond a curtained window, a dark-haired woman reading in a chair beside him. He also wasn’t wearing his glasses and it felt like they were miles away, though he glimpsed them on a blond wood table that was well within his reach.

“What’re you doing here?” he said, the rasp of his voice startling him. It was softer than he’d intended, weaker really. He sounded like the old man he sometimes played at being. 

“Reading,” Ruth said. “And waiting for you to wake up again.”

“Again? What the fuck? How are you even here?”

“I got a call to come,” she said. 

“I didn’t tell them to call anyone,” he said, remembering. “I said there was no one to call.”

“I guess you didn’t stick with that,” she said. “Do you want some water? I can get some fresh, or juice. They have a lot of juice here, apple and grape, all in these funny little fluted cups that seemed designed to spill.”

“You didn’t need to come. They’re sending me home soon, you made a long trip for nothing. Waste of your time,” he muttered. He felt exhausted, even though he’d evidently been out cold for a few hours.

“I don’t mind. I’m glad, actually, glad to be here,” she said. “The doctor hasn’t said anything about discharging you, you know.”

“Observation, just overnight, he told me.”

“Sam, what day do you think it is?” Ruth asked, leaning forward. She was paler than usual, no make-up, her hair in a ragged ponytail and shadows under her eyes. She smelled sweet, she smelled like some sort of little flower maybe, a scent he had no name for other than Ruth’s perfume.

“Tuesday. Justine and I spent the day meeting with studio people. She sold her screenplay,” he said. “I didn’t want her distracted by this, she should be out celebrating.”

“It’s Friday night. I called Rosalie, she came to pick her up,” Ruth explained. “She wasn’t going to leave but I told her she didn’t have to worry, I was staying no matter what.”

“What do you mean, Friday?” he said. He tried to sit up in the hospital bed but it was work it shouldn’t have been. Ruth laid her hand on his wrist, recalling that moment in the steakhouse, but this time she was telling him to be still.

“Sam, you had a heart attack. You don’t stay in the hospital overnight for observation after having a heart attack,” she said.

“That’s not true,” he protested. “That’s not what he said. The Chinese doctor, I don’t remember his name.”

“Dr. Lee said maybe Sunday you could go home, if you do okay. They have some more tests to run and they have to get you an appointment with a cardiologist,” Ruth said. “You really don’t remember?”

“No. Shit,” he said.

“You’re lucky to be alive, the nurse said. Marilyn, she’s the nicest one. She said the kind you had, they call it the widow-maker.” Ruth’s hand moved from his wrist to grasp his palm with her own. Her hand was much smaller than his but strong and slender. 

“Jesus.” Maybe, for once, it was a prayer. “I didn’t think it was that bad.” That wasn’t the truth but it was easier to say, lying in the bed with Ruth beside him. 

“It was. Did it hurt a lot?” she said.

“Yes. No, I don’t know. I felt dizzy, sick, and my hand went numb. There was a lot of pressure, felt like a fucking elephant on my chest. I didn’t want to fuck things up for Justine, the last guy loved her script—”

“You didn’t fuck anything up for her,” Ruth said. “She was pretty scared when I got here, but she was handling herself so well. You’d’ve been proud of her.”

“I told her that. At the car,” he said. He never saw himself in Justine’s face but there was something of his mother around her eyes, the curve of her lips. He had had some idea it might be bad, he’d wanted her to know.

“How about some juice now? To wet your whistle, as they say,” Ruth offered.

“Who says that? Fucking rubes in Nebraska?” Ruth smiled, appreciating the effort.

“I guess. Still, a little apple juice could be nice or maybe I can wangle some broth for you from Marilyn, if you want something savory,” she said. She started to let go of his hand and he clutched at her.

“No. Don’t go—I don’t want anything. Anything else. I’m not hungry,” he said. The idea that she would leave the room, even for a few minutes, was suddenly unendurable. She squeezed his hand very lightly, then leaned close enough to kiss him on the corner of his mouth. Close enough to his cheek to have the plausible deniability of friendship, except that even without his glasses, he could see the look in her eyes. He’d never seen a woman’s expression filled with such immense tenderness, not when they were looking at him.

“I can buzz Marilyn. Two apple juices would just about hit the spot right now, I think,” she said.

“In a little while,” he said. “What are you reading? Some actor’s craft shit? _A Room of Her Own_?”

“Nope. _Valley of the Dolls_. I grabbed it from the nurses’ station. I left my copy of _Vanity Fair_ back at the Fan-Tan,” Ruth said.

“You could read a little to me,” Sam said, as if he were being magnanimous. Asking her to read to him like he was a child. A lover.

“Do you want me to do voices? I do a pretty good Patty Duke,” Ruth said.

“Whatever you fucking want,” he said. “I might close my eyes for a bit.”

“That’s okay, Sam. If you fall asleep, that’s okay too. I’ll be here when you wake up,” she said.

A second voice woke him from the dozy state he’d been in roughly twelve fucking seconds after she started reading. Another woman, pitched higher, less familiar.

“You can go home and get some rest, I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“No, I’ll stay. I won’t be able to sleep away from him, anyway,” Ruth said. 

“There are extra blankets in the warmer. Let me know if you want a hot cup of tea, Mrs. Sylvia.”

“Thanks. That’s kind of you,” Ruth said. She didn’t say anything else, no hurried corrections, and then it was quiet again, the door closing and Ruth’s even breaths following him into dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> For once, the title is from a song title, not Shakespeare, Donne or Emily Dickinson.
> 
> It is frankly inconceivable Sam would have been sent home after observation overnight, so I fixed that part.
> 
> Sam slightly mangles the title of A Room of One's Own, an extended essay by Virginia Woolf, first published in September 1929. The work is based on two lectures Woolf delivered in October 1928 at Newnham College and Girton College, women's constituent colleges at the University of Cambridge. An important feminist text, the essay is noted in its argument for both a literal and figurative space for women’s writers within a literary tradition dominated by men.
> 
> Valley of the Dolls is the first novel by American writer Jacqueline Susann. The "dolls" of the title are drugs.


End file.
